The recording of last week´s webinar "Status of Solar Heating and Cooling Worldwide" is now available on solarthermalworld.org. Key results of the two most comprehensive studies on the Solar Heating and Cooling Sector were presented: REN21’s the Renewables 2016 Global Status Report (GSR2016) from REN21 and Solar Heat Worldwide from the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling programme (IEA SHC). The charts of the three presentations are also available for download.

A new joint-venture founded in Beijing, China, on 31 May aims at offering large-scale solar heating solutions on the Chinese market. The country’s market leader, Jiangsu Sunrain Solar Energy, and Arcon-Sunmark, a Danish turnkey large-scale system provider, joined forces to establish Arcon-Sunmark Large-Scale Solar Systems Integration Co., Ltd., headquartered in Beijing. The photo shows (from left) Xinjian Xu, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Jiangsu Sunrain Solar Energy, Torben Sørensen, Group Executive Officer of VKR Holding, the owner of Arcon-Sunmark, and Mads Kann-Rasmussen, Board Member of VKR Holding, who represents the family behind VKR.

Since July 2015, renewables for industrial processes has been one of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency’s (ARENA) investment priorities, which includes solar process heat. ARENA also published the report Renewable Energy Options for Australian Industrial Gas Users in September 2015, emphasising that lower-temperature process heat systems at around 100 °C are most “prospective at present”. Positive Internal Rates of Return are achieved with gas prices above 5 AUD/GJ. According to the report, the wholesale price for gas was between 6 and 8 AUD/GJ in 2014 and is expected to rise to between 9 and 12 AUD/GJ before the end of the decade.

Solarthermalworld wanted to know how the German research team from Fraunhofer ISE arrived at the conclusion that solar thermal is only an optional technology for the decarbonisation of the German energy industry by 2050 and that this decarbonisation could as well be achieved without solar heat. ISE researcher Sebastian Herkel explained the results from the Renewable Energy Model REMod-D. Simulations aim at finding the lowest total cost for the transformation of the energy industry and are performed on an hourly basis to ensure the security of supply in all sectors throughout the year.

“Large-scale solar thermal systems in the GW range – an insignificant niche market or the future for solar thermal?” was the official title of a panel discussion at the Gleisdorf Solar conference in Austria in early May. The most important question was: What will be next for the planned 350 MW_th solar district heating system called Big Solar in the Austrian city of Graz? “We intend to realise the project in collaboration with a specialist, and we would prefer to have a heat supply contract with a company which will built and operate the plant. We’re going to decide on that soon,” announced Gerald Moravi, Managing Director of Energie Steiermark, the regional utility.

Typically, the number of jobs in the global solar heating and cooling industry is based on general assumptions and fragmentary extrapolations. The authors who publish the two annual studies on these job numbers have tried each year to improve upon the database – with success, although they still end up with different figures. The Solar Heat Worldwide Edition 2016 published by Austrian institute AEE INTEC estimated that 730,000 people had a job related to the manufacturing, installation or maintenance of solar thermal systems in 2014. The study Renewable Energy and Jobs - Annual Review 2016 by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) put the figure at 939,000 in the global solar heating and cooling industry in 2015 – 12 % of the world’s 8.1 million jobs in the renewable sector.